


In a Week

by A_Writing_Pen



Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Ruroken Week 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 17:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7473438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Writing_Pen/pseuds/A_Writing_Pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite the freezing cold outside, Katsura Kogoro did not want to stay in the small empty cabin. The home had been left as it was; the bed unmade, the fire was a collection of ashes, and the food had spoiled. There was a staleness to the room even after he opened the doors and windows to the winter chill. When he saw the home in its present state, he knew he would not feel at peace traveling back to Kyoto until the house was in order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Week

**Author's Note:**

> The title and inspiration for this one-shot is from Hozier's "In a Week"
> 
> I've had this sitting on my computer for over a year now and I'm finally posting it for Ruroken Week. This will also probably be the fic that gets me kicked out of the fandom. I shouldn't be allowed to write while listening to music. Also, I know the travel distance is much shorter, but let’s just assume things took a while and we’re going by the OVA’s travel estimation of roughly a few days travel

Despite the freezing cold outside, Katsura Kogoro did not want to stay in the small empty cabin. The home had been left as it was; the bed unmade, the fire was a collection of ashes, and the food had spoiled. There was a staleness to the room even after he opened the doors and windows to the winter chill. When he saw the home in its present state, he knew he would not feel at peace traveling back to Kyoto until the house was in order. On his hands and knees he scrubbed the floors clean, cleaned out the fire before stoking it to life, and threw out the spoiled food. He hoped to erase that moment frozen forever in the snow by paying penance to the home, but the more he cleaned the deeper he ingrained the image of the bodies into his brain.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. With all the chaos in the capital and the threat of his enemies ever looming his absence was selfish, he could have sent anyone, but he knew he had to come. Takasugi wouldn’t forgive him if he didn’t.

The few personal items Katsura found he prepared to bring with him. The home was a haven but always a temporary one; flight was always kept in mind so the only important items had to be small and light enough to be carried. Looking through the rooms Katsura found a mirror, a child’s top, and the woman’s diary. He placed each of them in his travel bag. He would carry them back with him to Kyoto, but from there he did not know what he would do with them since he knew of no family or friends to leave them with. They would have to remain his burden, like so many others.

The diary he was tempted to read, but not now. The longer he stayed in the emptied home he felt the loneliness of it. The floors were pristine now, no dust or dirt remained where he had scrubbed on his hands and knees but behind his eyes he could still see the bloodied snow in the early spring thaw and smell haiku baikou that could not cover the stench of decay. A knock at the door drew his attention.

Opening the door he found a group of children, one of whom held a kite. At best, none of them could have been older than 10, but the children were unusually solemn. A stranger was the last thing they expected and the smaller children shrunk from him and the older ones looked back at him with disappointment. One of the girls, medium height with her hair in a bun, spoke first.

“We saw the smoke.” She said, pointing to the black air rising from the fire Katsura had set to warm up the house once he shut the doors and windows again. “We thought—Where’s onii-san and onee-san?”

“Onn—Do you mean the young couple?” He said. The girl nodded.

For a moment, he wondered what would have happened if the children had found them. They were familiar with the home enough to openly walk to their house with a kite, he suspected, to play as they had quite often. Suddenly, he was grateful that the spring thaw was delayed and had hidden the frozen corpses and kept the villagers away.

“They’ve gone away.” Katsura said.

“When are they coming back?” The boy holding the kite spoke this time.

“They won’t be, I’m sorry.”

The taller boy, the one with his hair in a tied up in a ponytail, stuck his chin out defiantly at the news, as the other children grew sadder. The boy still held a stick with him and despite his youth showed something of a warrior’s spirit. In fact, the boy had carried a long stick with him in the hopes of pretend swordfighting as he had so many times before. If it had been under different circumstances and if had known, Katsura would found humor in the fact that the boy pretend to be “Katsuro Kogoro” in those pretend duels.

The boy with the kite gripped the edge of it tighter.

“Onee-san and Onii-san should have said if they were leaving.”

Katsura closed his eyes and saw the decrepit shrine again.

“I wish they had too. No one will be here after today,” his voice was sharper than he meant it to be. He had commanded countless men, negotiated with some of the most arrogant leaders and barely escaped death when he and his comrades were declared traitors in his own province, but talking to a small group of children felt more daunting. 

“Please get home safely.” He said, making his tone even this time.

“That’s what Onii-san would always say.” The youngest girl said, her first words since the group arrived.

Katsura’s features softened.

“Then I don’t think he’ll mind if I tell you in his place.”

After the children left, Katsura was left alone again in the home. In his solitude, he removed Tomoe’s diary from his bag and began reading. He could not wait until he was in Kyoto. He already knew of Iizuka’s betrayal, Tomoe’s role as a spy, and the inevitable fate of the young couple he had sent into hiding in the mountains.

The discovery of Iizuka’s betrayal was turned up through the long standing investigation into the information leaks, but what had truly put the investigation onto his tracks was Katagi’s disappearance and assumed death. Granted, at the time Katsura only had a vague suspicion of Iizuka’s connection, but it was enough to scrutinize the man’s actions more closely and then the man was nowhere to be found, confirming his guilt. Undoubtedly he had already fled to the farthest corners he could reach and had several days’ advantage, but Katsura vowed to find him. He had personally singed his death warrant before he left. That was the least something he could offer the funeral pyres.

While the diary explained many of Tomoe’s thoughts and the young couple’s life in Otsu, it could not explain what happened in the forest. Katagi’s disappearance and suspicion about Iizuka told him to look into the couple since no other form of contact had been herd. Sources not far from Otsu said villagers complained about several explosions and the sounds of battle. Some of the villagers had tried to look in on the couple themselves, but a snowstorm had begun, delaying anyone from venturing into the mountain for several days. By the time the villagers made the long trek, snow covered but did not fully conceal the scars of battle, and fled the site in confusion and horror. The trees and ground were still damaged from the explosions and were the only means left to retrace the battle since the blood and footprints had long been covered up.

Katsura walked the same path from the home to the final battle outside of the abandoned shrine. When the villager had tried to find the couple, he found the first body of one of the Yaminabou members and never made it to the shrine. Frightened, the villager ran back home and announced his discovery. The rebels, keeping their eyes and ears close to the ground reported back and confirmed Katsura growing concerns over why he had not heard anything back from the couple. Only days earlier he had discovered Katagi’s death. When he learned of the bodies, Katsura signed Iizuka’s death warrant then and left for small village.

Under the snow Katsura had found the couple and the fallen Yaminabou leader. The slaughter outside almost made him overlook the shrine itself. Inside the shrine was a young boy with white hair who had frozen to death. It was not until he had read Tomoe’s diary that he realized the child was most likely her the younger brother she mentioned in her last few entries, though how exactly he had ended up in the shrine he did not know. Katsura made arrangement for the boy’s body to be cared for as well. The Yaminabou agents could rot for all he cared.

The snow only offered Katsura an estimation of their final moments. Kenshin and the Yaminabou member had felled each other in battle, apparent from their wounds. The woman on the other hand appeared to be a suicide, dealing the fatal wound with her own dagger. Illuminated by the diary, perhaps it was out of acknowledgment of the revenge she enacted; ending her own life now that he fiancé had been avenged. Yet the bodies rejected that assessment.

Katsura wanted be one of the first people on the scene so the bodies had remained undisturbed. When he saw them, he never would have guessed the hatred that had brought them together. The couple was laying side by side, Kenshin felled by the deathstroke of the battle, Tomoe a dagger wound to the throat while the Yaminabo agent lay only inches away, nearly split in half. He had bleed out from the wound as the residue of blood underneath the snow told. The woman had slight her throat in ritual fashion, save tying her feet because of the circumstances. Her body did not lay next to Kenshin because that was where her body had fallen. She held her right hand in his left while the dagger still lay in her other hand. From this position she must have lain herself down intentionally next to his and cut her throat. While somewhat awkward in practice, she had wanted to be found next to him, affectionately, not the actions of woman who truly despised the dead man. It had seemed something akin to love.

Whatever had truly transpired in those final moments, the results were clear. The young couple died together, the enemy was killed, and the boy, either traumatized by the events or unable to leave of his own accord, died in the shrine from exposure. Katsura rubbed his temples, there was so much death. How long had they lain there? Grimly, Katsura thought the only mercy was that it had been winter, that the temperatures had been near freezing to preserve them.

He closed the diary, enlightened but still disturbed. It confirmed that Iizuka had betrayed them from the beginning and Tomoe’s own motivations, but other than that it offered little more for their investigation. But the personal connection was all the more gripping, the damned fate that had bound her and Kenshin together and ultimately hanged them both. He had read Tomoe’s declaration that she would protect the second man she loved; it was so strong that he could understand that when she failed, her final moments in the forest must have been agony. That only brought more questions.

How long did she stay in the cold surrounded by dead bodies? Did she watch Kenshin die slowly or quickly and what had that stirred in her? Why had the boy, most likely the brother she mentioned, stayed instead of returning to village for safety? What he knew and what the bodies showed him congealed into macabre images of what their final moments had been like.

He placed the diary back into his bag. He could not stay in the home any longer. The bodies had been prepared and the funerals already taken place in a small isolated space behind the home. All evidence of the couple’s presence would be destroyed once the home was burned down. Katsura would take the ashes of the couple and boy with him to Kyoto. Closing the door behind him as he stepped out into the cold, he knew these burdens would weigh especially heavy on him.


End file.
